Technical Field
The present invention relates to a contact which is designed to detect an object through a soft contact therewith and an electrical connection testing apparatus using the contact.
Related Art
There has been disclosed in, for example, Patent Document 1, a contact for electrically connecting electric component. According to the arrangement, the contact is supported by a needle holder within a housing so that, when a distal end of the contact is forced by the contact with an associated electrode of the object, it swings about the needle holder to compressively deform the needle holder. During the swing, the distal end of the contact makes a frictional contact with the associated electrode to remove the oxidized film generated on the electrode, reducing an electrical resistance between the contact and the associated electrode to establish a reliable electrical contact therebetween.
Also, Patent Document 2 discloses another arrangement in which a rigid contact is supported by elastic members so that a displacement of the contact caused by the contact with a semiconductor device is accommodated by the compressive deformation of the elastic members.
In either event, the disclosed contact is made of rigid material and therefore not elastically deformable, which may scrape and damage the contact of the testing member. Also, the rigidity of the contact may allow only a small dimensional tolerance. Therefore, when assembled in a testing device, the contact force may be unstable, which may result in an unreliable contact with the testing member.    Patent Document 1: JP 2009-103563 A    Patent Document 2: JP 2010-118220 A